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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: koan who wrote (503784)	8/12/2009 12:17:42 AM
From: bentway	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1575486

"Russia and China are real enemies." I wouldn't call them enemies. I'd call them rivals with the potential to become serious enemies. I'd say BOTH of them are devoting more resources to economic development than military development in this period. They want to beat us economically. China may very well succeed. Saddam Hussein's Iraq was never a threat, and would never have been a threat in the future. It did not attack us. The invasion of Iraq was Bush getting to play with his army men - as Rummy said, there just weren't enough targets in Afghanistan!

To: koan who wrote (503784)	8/12/2009 8:28:08 AM
From: jlallen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1575486

We were almost routed by the Taliban! LOL!! Utter poppycock....where do you pinheads come up with such nonsense.....?

To: koan who wrote (503784)	8/12/2009 8:32:52 AM
From: Brumar89	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1575486

"We were almost routed by the Taliban!" When did that happen? Actually, after 911 everyone expected more terror attacks in our country and AQ promised more attacks. At the same time, AQ was massively popular in the Arab world having been able to strike a giant blow at the greatest infidel power. By putting troops into the Arab heartland, Bush diverted the terrorists to Iraq. Fighting them and defeating them on their own ground instead of ours. And drawing them into making attacks against fellow Arabs - now AQ is hated even by most Arabs instead of being admired. The US hasn't been attacked since 911. Even our embassies overseas haven't been. With the exception of Iraq and Afghanistan of course. Compare this to the decade prior to 911 when our troops and embassies were hit all over the world - remember the African embassies, the USS Cole, the barracks bombings? Amazing that outside the two war zones, none of this has been happening since. Wonder what the real Sun Tzu would say about that? He'd probably actually advocate beheading our domestic fifth columnists, who seek our defeat for their own partisan purposes.

To: koan who wrote (503784)	8/12/2009 9:26:09 AM
From: i-node	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1575486

>>> Iraq was never any threat to our entire country. Not the issue, in any way, shape or form. The question is not whether they posed a threat, rather, it is whether defeating Saddam could form the basis for some kind reduction in threat against us, which of course, it could and has. While it remains to be seen whether the democracy in Iraq will hold, if it does, it will have a huge influence on the region as well as on the ability of those who attacked us on 9/11 to foment anger in the region. Even if one argues that Iraq was a mere nibble around the problem, that's the way these problems are solved. Tzu understood this strategy of attacking, not the heart of the enemy, but instead to attack those portions or outposts of the enemy could be readily defeated. And in the process, one becomes better at fighting the enemy. Without question, we have learned a lot about fighting these people, while reducing -- even if marginally -- the threat from an attack from Iraq. Bush expended trillions and wore down our army and national guard and all the equipment to the point where we did not even have reserves when we neeeded them in afghanistan This, of course, is a totally inaccurate statement. Bush did NOT expend "trillions" -- and in fact, the Iraq war has cost us to date substantially less than Obama's so-called "stimulus". And in fact, the expenditure on the Iraq war undoubtedly did more for America than Obama's stimulus has or will. While our military has been spread thin by the Iraq and Afghan wars -- often requiring families like mine to deal with multiple deployments of their soldiers, our guys are far better equipped to deal with these issues today than they were before the Iraq War. We have outfitted the Iraqi military with all our old Humvees (which were being decommissioned anyway) and developed new vehicles (RG31 MRAPs, Buffalos, etc.) which are optimized for this kind of fighting. Sure, Sun TZU would wear down his army against an enemy he doesn't even need to worry about with two cave bears at his rear. Tzu did not believe it was within his responsibility to determine whether a war should be fought. It wasn't his call (as it proven up by the fact that he fought Chu without believing in the "cause"). Tzu believed in fighting smartly, and in retrospect I think it will be clear that fighting Saddam was an exceptionally smart thing to have done. Today, a lot of people can't see this, but over time, if we don't